Tag: patrick grant

By the time this post goes live I will have had my Community Clothing jeans for around a month. That’s not that long considering they were almost six months in the making between when I backed the project and when I got the jeans!

Community Clothing launched on Kickstarter on February 15th and I’m proud to have been among the first backers, making my pledge on the 18th – although I didn’t realise it at the time! A month later it successfully kicked off having raised over the £75,000 target – notably with the support of just over 1,000 backers. That’s really not that many people when you consider the media coverage and clout of the project.

The project is the brainchild of Patrick Grant, of Savile Row & GBSB fame. This is what the project is all about, taken from their website:

Community Clothing is a manufacturers cooperative with a simple mission; to make excellent quality affordable clothes for men and women, to create great jobs for skilled workers and by doing this help to restore real pride in Britain’s textile communities.

We are in the business of ‘making clothes, creating jobs and restoring pride’.

The idea is that the Community Clothing range will be manufactured during the “off-season” periods when the factories are not fulfilling orders from the big fashion labels. Plus, by selling direct to the consumer and cutting out the wholesale and retailer markups, the range can be sold at a much lower price than you’d expect for the quality of manufacture and materials used.

For my pledge of £49, I received the women’s slim cut selvedge five-pocket jean. Based on their measurement chart I went for the size 14. There was only one leg length – fair enough for the Kickstarter capsule collection – so I knew they’d be too long. Fortunately the models in the pictures were shown with a turned-up cuff so I thought I would probably do the same. Sure enough, it’s a double turnup, and I actually think these jeans have come up a little on the larger size. In hindsight I maybe could have gone for the 12 but I absolutely didn’t want them to be too small. They’re definitely less “slim-cut” on me but hey, mom jeans are in fashion now right??

I do love the details of these jeans though. The denim is a really good dark, rich blue and they’re a good weight – you know they’ll last. The outside seam finish is even bound – nice that it’s revealed by the turnup, and all the stitching stands out but also sits well with the dark denim.

The insides count too though, and one of the things I loved about the project was the revival of the “CC” utility clothing wartime logo:

The labelling inside the jeans is simple but effective, and I love that they also put the place of manufacture in such a prominent position.

Obviously the project has been busy fulfilling all the Kickstarter orders but now they are turning their attention to the next steps, which look to involve an online store, possibly via eBay, launching in early September, and a bricks-and-mortar (literally, restored Victorian) shop-cum-HQ in Blackburn. Due to absurd demand they are taking pre-orders on the current line of products and I can’t wait to see what they come up with next.